Guild Wars 2

For me wvw represents tactical battles and siege warfare with lots of people. Structure/Personal upgrades are a good way to improve the defensive value of a fortification even if it’s a camp. Also placing siege weapons in key locations is very important, for instance a trebuchet to counter catapults, catapults to counter door rams/golems and arrow-carts to keep invaders at bay.

As time passes you realize that the personal upgrades aren’t very good because the NPCs are week. The oil/canon/mortar are very easily killed by players and only provide an advantage when fighting against unorganized pugs. Camps are easily captured at least twice every 12 minutes in order to get the 5 points when the timer resets, so they are rarely upgraded even though with the 4 upgrades dolyaks can carry 140 supply instead of the initial 35.

In the end, the only upgrades that are worth the money and dolyak escorts are the walls/doors upgrades and the waypoint for the keeps.

Siege weapons are a necessity when defending locations. You must always have at least 1 catapult at each door. 2 catapults are better because you can time them correctly and keep the rams always knocked down and damage the golems really fast. When the door attack fails, usually the attackers go for catapults and if you don’t have a well placed trebuchet you have to resort to portal bombing their siege.

But the siege weapons are only good if you have at least reinforced walls/doors. Without them your siege weapons are pretty much worthless especially when defending a small tower.

Most people know most of these things, but the problem is that not many people spend the money upgrading or placing and building the siege weapons or escort the dolyaks. So people go where the rewards are better which is where usually the commanders are. And you can’t blame them since playing defensive is sometimes boring and doesn’t give any rewards, while at the same time you have to spend your money, blueprints and time.

I thought that when we will reach T1 I will see a lot more emphasis on the defense and zergs will not be that efficient. But on the contrary I was proven that WvW is all about the numbers and very importantly all clumped together in a big zerg. Some may argue that well placed siege and upgrades mean a lot but time and time again I have been proven that nothing can be done to an organized zerg. Guardian bubbles can prevent a lot of the knockback and damage from catapults when dealing with the zerg and with a couple of golems teleported by mesmers you can take the whole map. Also the aoe heals, the downed state, the resurrect spam, the mesmer teleports and the culling issue makes it very hard to see what’s going on to give you a chance to counter it.

If at the beginning of the game the term zerg was used as more of an insult, now zergs can be a lot more efficient than packs of people going around the map capturing points. A good strategy is to have 1-2 teams going around the map and destroyed the siege on the walls and then the zerg will follow and take the point.

To come to a conclusion I’m disappointed in WvW because it was built as a glorified capture the point system with the purpose of a gold sink for pve. Since the top server in T1 Europe uses mainly the zerg to capture points it is a fact that zergs are much more efficient than other ways and since everyone is in WvW for the rewards people are always attacking instead of defending so it’s easy for a zerg to capture wooden structures with barely any siege in key locations.

We will have to wait until February to see what the devs will change, but I have a sad feeling that not much will be changed and WvW will continue to function as a gold sink for some or a gold/karma farm for others.

great post – let’s hope February brings something better

The game can be played differently, but because people are set on attacking only, no defense what so ever and attacking only in zergs.
Right now it’s so pathetic to see SFR using the same zerg tactics with Vizuna even though SFR is constantly repelled by Vizuna because they have the bigger numbers.
Anyways, let’s see what we do, next week, but if we continue playing the same we will never match Vizuna’s zerg.

I wonder what would happen if they nerf golems teleporting through portals :O

Abuse the transfers and… transfer lower.

Low tier servers actually make use of defense. All and any upgrades are worth much more, since there are less people to breeze through upgraded keeps. There are no zergs around because… there are not enough people to zerg.
The fights are more tactical. More use of siege machinery. And the fights are actually worth more – staying in the tier, advancing up, not dropping…

Gunnar’s Hold would welcome you, yes.

I agree. The problem with WvW is that it is not being played the way it was designed/intended.

It’s obvious that they expected guilds to claim the towers and forts. That those guilds would then stay and defend those locations and spend the money to upgrade them.

That simply does not happen and maybe never will. With nothing but a few useless NPCs to guard, no guild is going to spend the money or time defending a single location that will just get taken from them during offline hours. Not to mention that defending a single location will most likely be extremely boring.

WvW is not as large as I think the developers think it is. A single waypoint does not discourage people from wanting to play defense and avoid dying. WvW needs harsher punishment for dying. Perhaps a longer respawn time, forcing people to revive each other. Also, guilds might be more inclined to claim and defend locations if they were given better reasons for doing so. Perhaps something such as a waypoint at said location that only their guild can use?

The biggest problem in WvWvW is perma stealth thieves due to culling. Driving players from the game.

I think that guilds would be more inclined to claim and defend locations if each event that expires while under that guild’s control granted influence boosts (much higher above the normal rate) as long as one member of the representing guild was present.

To make that more interesting, perhaps allow guilds to customize guards in some way, or have a choice in siege placement for things like mortars and cannons, or have a way to repair damaged siege (again like mortars and cannons). I see oil drums and cannons sitting for hours and hours and frankly it’s depressing to know that you can’t really do anything about it.

Edit:
Maybe instead of breakout events there should be assassination events, where a small troupe of npc thieves would hop into the lord room (towers only) and sweep the place if left unchecked (let’s say it takes 5 minutes), which would cause the tower to go neutral. Neutral towers would slowly deteriorate at random until the walls and/or gate crumbled (let’s say it takes 10 minutes for something to break), at which point any server could just walk in and take it uncontested.

Doing something like this instead of breakout events would achieve a similar effect without hurting diligent invading forces. If it took a group of ~5 to protect the tower from the assassination attempt then there’d be an incentive for people to stick behind. It’d get rid of the zerg-and-flip gameplay to an extent as it’d require people to stay behind and watch over things, and it’d discourage people from entering a borderland, claiming everything, laughing and leaving while they gain thousands of uncontested points overnight.

I personally would prefer maintenance-style events/gameplay (and to be rewarded for it) than the current system. Create a bunch of tower-neutralizing events like this and have them randomly occur every 20-30 minutes and I am positive that there will be more incentive for guilds to invest in towers. Maybe make one of the guild abilities be a nightwatch to limit the impact of such events, I dunno.

tl;dr
breakout events are horrible, people stop caring about towers once they’re upgraded (you upgrade them so that they last longer/your zerg has more time to get there), guilds don’t really invest in stuff for anything other than the 5 supply bonus

…so they are rarely upgraded even though with the 4 upgrades dolyaks can carry 140 supply instead of the initial 35.

It is actually just the 1 upgrade needed to increase supply delivery. I am of the mind to always upgrade supply deliveries first. The Dolyaks can be killed with or without the guards if they aren’t being escorted by humans.

Low tier servers actually make use of defense. All and any upgrades are worth much more

I am sure that is server dependent because I saw the exact opposite when I xfered to Kaineing for a night a while back. I am pretty sure they had never seen a fully upgraded camp before and I also upgraded towers and started upgrades on keeps…
The problem was nobody ever defended. So saying “Inc LV, need help” resulted in confusion by people. Like, what? Why would we defend? So the tower was taken before the upgrade could go through and no one cared. They took a keep and I started an upgrade and they said, “We don’t plan on holding this” I left after 1 night because it was too foreign to me.

It’s obvious that they expected guilds to claim the towers and forts. That those guilds would then stay and defend those locations and spend the money to upgrade them.
That simply does not happen and maybe never will.

On SBI we try and have upgrades going at all times and try to defend at all times (Minus the last few days where we seem to be down about 50 people) Having waypoints at all 3 keeps is super handy. But I agree somewhat that it is discouraging to then be steamrolled by 4 x your numbers in a matter of minutes after hours and hours of upgrading. At least people on SBI try and defend.

The biggest problem in WvWvW is perma stealth thieves due to culling. Driving players from the game.
I don’t know if that’s the biggest problem but it is sure up there. It hasn’t driven a lot of us out but as stated in the other thread, whether they are OP or not… the game has lost people because of them and that is just a fact.

Those are some interesting ideas. I would like it if the supply system was revamped a little bit in order to make things like that possible. Perhaps allowing guilds to spend influence to buy supply, or buy supply carts they could take to a location, or perhaps upgrade individual members to be “carriers”. Supply Carriers could hold extra supply and guildees could take supply from them while out in the field.

Haha, making players become mini yaks (slow and encumbered, maybe less skills) would be awesome. Imagine killing off a “supply zerg herd.”

Oh well fun idea, but it would change everything about WvW too much.

WvW biggest problem culling and lack of rewards/character progress. There should be some kind of treasure chest (huge loot table) inside every keep and tower or something. Players/guilds who kick kitten should have awesome looking armors, titles and so on. It’s just nice to get rewards when you do something fun. Karma, gold and blue and green items are just boring. There should be some kind of battle stats too. Players wanna know who kill lot’s of enemies and stuff.

Ok, so who is first to write a guide on how to defend a keep / tower from the “zerg”. An explanation on where to place Siege. ( preferably per tower / keep ).
An Explanation how to get your defence rewards ( just beat back attackers for more then 15 min wil get you better rewarded then to actually stomping down a capture point ).
Furthermore: we need good suggestions in the suggestion thread about:
simple and easy to use communiction.
About simple and easy to use guild reward systems, about attackers rewards ( so far only capturing a point rewards you, while they clearly stated on time that failure should be an option too ).
About the strength of the guards. ( in my humble opinion the strength of the guards is not scaled propperly )

Just my 2 cents after a great read from poster.

Have Fun.

I’m glad some people are interested in defensive tactics.
I will try to make some videos and post it here about upgrades and siege placement

Basically why ppl have left the game ages ago, the zerg rules unless they can be killed by a fg it’s just a zerg v zerg game.

There need to be better rewards for defending a base. I know, most of the time it’s just standing around (dancing) while you wait for someone to attack. If the rewards for doing that were better, people might actually do it. Everyone just wants to run with the zerg, get kills, points, badges, loot, karma and all that neat stuff.

As it stands now, when I do it, I sometimes fall asleep from boredom and lack of drops, loots, karma, points, badges and, what’s the word…. of yea, FUN.

Yay WvWvZzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Art.9820:

I wonder what would happen if they nerf golems teleporting through portals :O

That’s a good question. It would hurt lower pop servers badly, though.